What Your Purchases Mean for Politics, Republicans Fight for Top Committee Spots and More in Capital Eye Opener: December 1

Your daily dose of news and tidbits from the world of money in politics:

THANKS FOR PURCHASING POLITICS. WILL THAT BE PAPER OR PLASTIC?: Many companies’ corporate political action committees make donations to political interests, so when you pick up what they’re sellin’, you’re also picking up the tab for a portion of their efforts. But how is the consumer supposed to know?

Simply drag it to your bookmarks > go to your banking site > go to where you view your itemized purchases > click on tracker in your bookmarks toolbar. Voila!

A pop-up will appear, showing a breakdown of your purchases in terms of the donations the parent companies make to which politicians. In the interest of transparency (and displays of awesome visuals), here’s a screen shot of my bank account’s activity as seen through the tracker.

GIMME THE GAVEL: Congressional Republicans are fighting for top spots on House committees. Many of the seats are already decided, but big name committees such as the Appropriations Committee, Intelligence Committee and Energy and Commerce Committee remain up for grabs.

A Washington Post article outlines the candidates and the Center for Responsive Politics analyzes the hopefuls’ potential financial interests:

Appropriations Committee:

Republicans, and soon-to-be Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio), say they are vying for a leader who won’t sneak earmarks into budget bills. Although potential committee leaders say they have agreed to abide by the Boehner and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) earmark ban, they all heavily favored the pet project spending. Boehner and Cantor have not requested any earmarks in 2010.

Here’s the amount of earmark requests they’ve made in the 2010 fiscal year:

Energy policies get crafted here. Below is the amount of money the congressmen have taken from the energy and natural resources sector, which includes oil and gas interests, in the 2010 election cycle.

After 30 years of recorded viewer complaints, the Federal Communications Commission is writing new regulations for the volume — as in decibel level — of campaign advertisements, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

It was thought that there was no objective way to “quantify or control” it. However, a new bill co-sponsored by Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), which is expected to pass quickly in the lame duck session, aims to control political noise.

The volume of campaign ads was turned up to grab attention, but ended up leaving consumers irritated. Those advertisements will no longer be able to exceed the volume of other programming. And with a combination of elections becoming ever more expensive and advertisements flooding airwaves around an election, ears around America will get a reprieve.

Have a news tip or link to pass along? We want to hear from you! E-mail us at press@crp.org.

Media Contact

Viveca Novak
(202) 354-0111
press@crp.org

Search

Archives

Categories

Count Cash & Make Change.

OpenSecrets.org is your nonpartisan guide to money's influence on U.S. elections and
public policy. Whether you're a voter, journalist, activist, student or interested citizen,
use our free site to shine light on your government.